John August

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Writer/Directors and Co-Ops

Film Industry, News

This weekend brought two stories of interest to screenwriters, particularly those of the Hollywood bent.

The first was [Rachel Abramowitz’s article](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-ca-writers18mar18,1,5043214.story?ctrack=1&cset=true) in the LA Times about the recent batch of screenwriters-turned-directors, which included bits about Scott Frank, Mike White, and Charlie Kaufman, among others. I spoke to her about *The Nines*:

“Most of what I do never makes it to the screen,” he says, voicing a common lament. “I feel all this responsibility to those characters and these stories. They’re half alive. They’re trapped in 12-point Courier.”

“The Nines,” he says, deals with “the responsibility of a creator to his creations. You can look at it from a religious point of view. If you create this whole universe, are you responsible for making sure it sticks around?”

The second story comes from today’s Variety, in which Michael Fleming breaks the news of a new [“Writer’s Co-Op”](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117961371.html?categoryid=13&cs=1) formed by writer/producer John Wells and others.

I’ve read the article three times, and many of the details aren’t clear. But here’s the basics: Nineteen established screenwriters are agreeing to cut their up-front fees in exchange for first-dollar gross on the projects that get made. In addition, the screenwriters would have additional controls over their material. The deal is set up at Warners; it’s unclear whether any other studios would match the terms.

Will it work? I hope so. While the Writers Guild plays a crucial role in enforcing minimum standards for payments and practices, I’ve long felt there was room for improvement at the top end of the feature screenwriting continuum. By banding together, big-name scribes can get more leverage.

Which leads to the awkward issue of which names are on that list of 19. Mine isn’t; I wasn’t asked.Insert whichever “wouldn’t join a club that would have me” rationalization you’d like. Did I feel a little slighted? Sure. Did the realization that other big names weren’t on the list comfort me? Yes. Is it awkward admitting this? Certainly. Readers might remember a similar-sounding agreement at Sony/Columbia several years back. I was part of that, and despite making several movies for the studio during the time, found that it never amounted to much.Word around the virtual water-cooler is that David Koepp likely made some money through the Sony deal, because his original Spider-Man grossed so much that the deal’s profit definition must have kicked in. For whatever reason, he’s not part of the Writers Co-Op deal. Many of the writers who were part of the Sony deal are participants in this new venture, so it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

The Big Red Cheese

News, Projects

[captain marvel]And now, the answer to speculation about why I was busy reading up on DC Comics mythology. As [announced today](http://replay.web.archive.org/20080718233550/http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i119db77792cbaa01e58b9c970709fb13) in The Hollywood Reporter, I’m writing Captain Marvel. And I’m very, very stoked.

The movie is set up at New Line, with Pete Segal attached to direct. For those who aren’t [rabid fans](http://www.marvelfamily.com/) of the character, here’s the briefest of introductions.The Wikipedia article is terrific, and worth a read if you’re curious.

Captain Marvel is a superhero roughly as powerful as Superman, minus the heat-vision and cold breath.That’s a lazy comparison, but in my experience, the average moviegoer is familiar with roughly five superheroes: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and Wolverine. And of those, Supes is the closest. What’s unique about the character is that in ordinary life, he’s teenager Billy Batson. Speaking the name of the wizard who gave him his powers (Shazam) calls down a magic thunderbolt, transforming him into the studly superhero. But he’s still a teenager in there.

If this to you sounds, “Like Big, but with superpowers,” then congratulations! You now understand Hollywood.

The process of getting hired to write it has taken months. It started with a call from my agent, asking, “Hey, have you ever heard of Captain Marvel?”

The answer was an enthusiastic yes. I was vaguely aware of the character growing up,Yes, I saw the live-action show. Let us never speak of it again. but it wasn’t until the character’s recent resurgence in the DC Comics universe that I started paying attention. Not more than a month before my agent’s call, I’d read a JSA and thought to myself…Someone should make a Captain Marvel movie. And now they were.

Pete Segal and producing parter, Michael Ewing, had already signed on, so the next step was meeting with them and figuring out if we shared the same tone for the movie. It’s not *Spider-Man* plus jokes. It’s a comic book movie where the characters in it read comics. The story needs to be funny and dramatic even if the villain never shows up. (Don’t worry, there’s a great villain.)

Once we agreed on the framework for the movie, [Geoff Johns](http://www.geoffjohns.com/) from DC was gracious enough to come in and idiot-check it for us. Having witnessed the uproar over Spidey’s organic web-shooters, we were all sensitive towards cavalierly changing things. Fortunately, Captain Marvel is pretty movie-friendly already, so we hadn’t bent or broken any mythology.

Between my time at Sundance and Pete’s prep schedule for his next movie (Get Smart), it took weeks to get a meeting with New Line. Going in for the pitch, I was warned that there would be a lot of people in the room. But I wasn’t prepared for the fact that four of the attendees would be sitting in by videoconference. It was incredibly awkward, but I got through it. And I got the job.

In my head, the movie’s called Captain Marvel, but for legal reasons, it will almost certainly be some variation on Shazam! I grumble because people will inevitably assume that the hero’s name is Shazam, when it’s not — Shazam is the old wizard. It’s like calling the Harry Potter movies “Dumbledore.” Then again, the hero isn’t a Captain, and doesn’t live in the Marvel universe. So you’re going to have confusion either way.

I can already anticipate the natural questions which will come up, most of which I can only answer, “I don’t know” or “I’m not allowed to say.” And I should re-iterate the standard disclaimer: most movies don’t get made. But I’m really hoping this one does.

How to write dialogue

Words on the page, Writing Process

Continuing my efforts to blog less about the profession of screenwriting and more about the craft, I thought I’d offer up some thoughts on dialogue. As with my earlier post on [How to Write a Scene](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/write-scene), this isn’t an exhaustive tutorial by any means. But it’s at least a guide for how I do it.

1. Listen to how actual people talk
====

We all watch movies and television, which is chock full of dialogue: good, bad and inane. One might think it helpful to listen to great actors speaking great words. It’s not. In fact, it will probably screw you up.

It’s like trying to paint landscapes based on how other artists paint landscapes. The best you can do is a crude approximation. In order to paint a great landscape, you need to get your butt out in the cornfield and paint what you see. There’s really no alternative.

Fortunately, the world is full of dialogue cornfields. Sitting at Fatburger for lunch, I eavesdropped on two engineers discussing fire door trim allowances, and two women in their 60’s clucking about how small the hamburgers were. Far more important than the content of the conversations was the flow, the back-and-forth. We tend to think of dialogue as a tennis volley, with the subject being hit back and forth between speakers. But when you really listen, you realize that people talk over each other constantly, and rarely finish a complete thought.

To get a sense of this flow, you need to stop paying attention to the actual words being spoken. It’s the auditory equivalent of un-focusing your eyes. Listen for which speaker is dominating the conversation, and how often the other party chimes in to acknowledge he’s still paying attention. (“Uh-huh.” “Yeah.” “Really?”) Questions are often not phrased as questions, and in real life, no one speaks with exclamation points.

How often should you eavesdrop? Pretty much constantly, with particular focus on finding interesting speakers. Some people are inherently funny, and if you soak up enough of their rhythms you can recreate them on the page fairly faithfully. But even the annoying woman ahead of you at the checkout line deserves a listen. You never know when she might come in handy.

2. Figure out the flow of your dialogue
====
Generally, before I put pen to paper, I let the scene loop in my head 10 or 40 times. Those first cycles are silent, but eventually characters begin to talk. Based on what needs to happen in the scene, it’s often pretty clear who’ll be saying what. But figuring out the flow — the how, the when, the why — takes time. You can rush it, but you’ll often end up with too many words in the wrong order. Or worse, you’ll end up with characters talking at each other rather than with each other.

So imagine watching your scene, but in a foreign language with the subtitles turned off. What does the talking feel like? What’s the emotion behind the words? Who’s in control? There’s a classic drama exercise in which actors have to stage a scene speaking only faux-Chinese. That’s what you’re looking for at this stage. Not the words, but the texture.

3. Pattern out the information
====
Conversations in real life are often empty (“these burgers are too small”), but movie conversations almost always involve an exchange of information (“the fingerprints don’t match” or “I’m not sure I ever loved you”). Your job as a writer is figuring out how your characters would tell each other the information.

Let’s say Bob needs to tell Mary that her dog has been eaten by a python. As the writer, you need to decide not only what facts Bob knows, but how he’s anticipating Mary will react to the news. This will determine not only how he starts the conversation (“Say, you were talking about how you wanted to get a new dog, right?”) but every subsequent decision along the way.

Of course, as the screenwriter you’re not solely interested in helping the characters convey information to each other; your primary focus is getting that information to the audience. The challenge is to do the latter while pretending to the former. So if it’s slipping a bit of exposition in a joke, or staging an altercation to reveal a piece of backstory, find a way.

Bad dialogue tends to spray out information in every direction, whereas smart dialogue sneaks the facts in while you’re otherwise entertained.

4. Write the scribble version
=====
The [scribble version](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/scribble-version-final-scene) is the very rough draft of a scene, devoid of formatting, punctuation and other garnishes. My scribble versions tend to be largely dialogue, with an emphasis on the overall flow rather than finding le mot juste.

5. Write the nice version
=====
Once you have the blueprint for the scene, it’s time to go back and start worrying about getting each word right. Great dialogue has a melody to it, and achieving that is probably unteachable. But you can write pretty good dialogue simply by reading each line aloud, over and over, smoothing off the awkwardness through better words or a different composition.

Movie dialogue is how characters would speak if they had a few extra seconds to compose their thoughts between lines. It’s just slightly optimized. But it’s very easy to overshoot and end up in soap opera land. Keeping dialogue real but efficient is one of the hardest challenges in screenwriting.

6. Ask: Are characters listening, or just speaking?
=====
Once you have the scene finished, take a look back and make sure your characters aren’t just speaking because it’s their turn. That’s a common problem, perpetuated (I believe) by the prevalence of exposition-heavy crime dramas.

  • BOOTHE
  • Two campers found the body in a culvert five miles down river.
  • GARMAN
  • Toxicology shows arsenic in the well.
  • BOOTHE
  • Looks like we got ourselves a serial killer.

While actors could probably pull this off as a conversation (with a lot of head nodding), it’s not hard to get Garman listening and responding:

  • BOOTHE
  • Two campers found the body in a culvert five miles down river. Once we get the toxicology back…
  • GARMAN
  • Just came. Arsenic in the well.
  • BOOTHE
  • Looks like we got ourselves a serial killer.

7. Ask: Is there a shorter version that works as well?
=====
Many times, the best way to improve dialogue is to cut it. Once you’ve let a scene sit for a while, revisit it with a red pen and look for what could be cut. If a piece of information isn’t essential, it should probably go. And a joke isn’t worth it if you’ve had to break the scene to achieve it.

The Hollywood Standard

Formatting, General, Resources, So-Called Experts

Update in February 2021: I no longer recommend (or half-recommend) this book. I think screenwriters are much better served by reading scripts of produced films, which you can easily find online. For simple formatting questions, you can visit [screenwriting.io](http://screenwriting.io).

—

This site caters largely to aspiring screenwriters new to the profession. That’s by design. My initial ambition in writing the [IMDb column](http://us.imdb.com/indie/ask-archive-toc), and then in creating the site, was to answer a lot of the questions I had when I was first starting out.

Screenwriting is an odd form: half stageplay and half technical document, somewhere between art and craft. And nowhere is its strangeness more apparent than the formatting. So it’s entirely reasonable that I’ve received many, many questions about margins and sluglines and whether a half-covered stadium is “INT.” or “EXT.”

But I’m done. Or at least, done for the time being. I’m going to cede all formating concerns to a printed book (yes, they still make them) which can answer newbie questions and let me focus on other points of word-pushing.

book coverThe book I’ve chosen to give up with is [The Hollywood Standard](http://astore.amazon.com/johnaugustcom-20/detail/1932907017/002-0355819-1894408) by Christopher Riley. It’s not perfect, but it’s refreshingly straightforward and anticipates most of the situations screenwriters are likely to face.

The author used to work for the Warner Bros. script processing department, which the book’s blurbs highlight as why he’s an expert. Honestly, if I had seen this before I bought it, I would have put it back on the shelf with a shudder.I got it on Amazon, and by the time I saw the blurb, I’d already broken down the box. David has Goliath; Ahab has the whale; I have the Warner Bros. script processing department. In my head, the department consists of three women in their 50’s who smoke and gossip as they retype scripts on 1980’s computers with amber monitors. For CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, I had the displeasure of reading their “official” version of the script, and realizing that they don’t just spellcheck and change margins — they rewrite things. Just because. Fortunately, we were shooting in London, beyond the reach of their nicotine-stained fingers. We threw their script in the bin.

So I would say despite his background, rather than because of it, I’m still giving Riley’s book a thumbs-up. He admits (on page xvii) that “good writers with long Hollywood careers may find details here with which to quibble. That’s fine.” And I do have minor quibbles.Yes, I’m claiming to be a good writer with a long career. But I also have a website with which to note my second opinions, so here they are.

Courier and margins
===
The term “fixed pitch font” is quaint, but let’s just say 12-pt. Courier. If you have a couple of Couriers on your computer, pick the one that looks best on-screen and printed. It really doesn’t matter that much.

Riley’s margins are fine, but I had to really think back to remember what “position 17” referred to (p. 4).It’s not kama sutra. Back in the old days, typewriters had mechanical stops to set the left and right margins, with painted (or engraved) markings to line them up. Tabs were set the same way. “Position 17” would be seventeen spaces over from the left edge of the paper.

That’s kind of fascinating in a post-neo-Luddite, technology-as-history Make-magazine way, but without explanation, it’s apt to be confusing to 21st-century readers. So perhaps that will be omitted in the next edition.

Medium shot (p. 12)
===
I’ve never typed this, and never seen it. Don’t use it. Same with “two shot,” unless it’s crucial for a joke.

Back to scene (p. 17)
===
Awkward. Better to use the “BACK TO HUCK” format he shows later on the same page.

Flashback (p. 33)
===
He underlines FLASHBACK and puts it in front of the scene heading. That’s not wrong, but I generally put it in brackets after the time of day. This way, it’s more likely to make it onto the call sheet for production.

INT. BEDROOM – DAY [FLASHBACK]

Capitalizing people (p. 47)
===
The book tells you to capitalize the first occurrence of only those characters who end up speaking, on the theory that AD’s need to treat these roles differently. I disagree. Capitalizing indicates which scene people are established in, which is a boon to other department heads, such as wardrobe and props. I capitalize the introduction of all roles, speaking or otherwise, including groups like FIVE SCHOOLCHILDREN or ANGRY VILLAGERS.

Parentheticals at the end of a speech (p. 70)
===
He’s right–a dialogue block shouldn’t end with a parenthetical. The exception is in animation, where this is common. You’ll often see dialogue end with (exasperated grunt) or (sigh).

Song lyrics in dialogue (p. 72)
===
He puts them in quotes. I suggest italics, in an 11-point sans-serif font. (I use Verdana, which pretty much every computer has.) It looks much, much better, and subtly signals that it’s not true dialogue.

Numbering “A” scenes (p. 95)
===
The A.D. on Big Fish and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ([Katterli Frauenfelder](http://imdb.com/name/nm0292390/)) taught me a different scheme which ends up being a lot less confusing for production and post-production. If you need to insert a scene between 121 and 122, you number it A122. That is, lettered scenes go before the normal scenes. The great advantage to this method comes during shooting, when each new setup for a scene is given a letter. If you shoot a master and two close-ups for scene 100, they’re labeled 100, 100A, 100B. For our inserted scene, Riley’s scheme would get confusing: he’d have 121A, 121AA, 121AB. Whereas Katterli’s method would give us A122, A122A, A122B.

If you’re doing A/B pages on a script, there’s very likely an A.D. involved, so consult with him or her about preferred numbering/lettering schemes.

Managing page numbers when a script is revised (p. 103)
===
Riley makes a heroic effort to explain a confusing topic, but trust me, you should never have a page A5B. If you, the writer, has a hard time understanding it, pity the poor wardrobe PA who has to figure out how to insert pages into her bosses’ scripts.

Once you get into the second revision on a series of pages, you’re almost always better off backing up and releasing a run of pages that uses true numbers. To use Riley’s example:

* __Between 5 and 6 comes 5A.__ (Yes.)
* __Between 5A and 6 comes 5B.__ (Okay.)
* __Between 5A and 5B comes A5B.__ (Never do this. Instead, revise starting at page 5, replacing 5A, 5B and adding 5C and further if need be.)

In general, the writer’s goal with A/B pages should be to release as few sheets of paper as possible, while still making it abundantly clear how it all fits together. In fact, I often attach a memo to colored pages explaining it. (Here are the memos I attached for the [blue](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/blue_pages_memo.pdf) and [pink](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/pink_pages_memo.pdf) pages of Charlie.)

Multi-camera (sitcom) script formatting (p. 117)
===
Here’s where I’m of no use. While I’ve read half-hour scripts, I’ve never written one, so I can’t say how accurate his advice is. But I will point out that every show is likely to have a “house style,” so it’s doubly important to get a real sample script from the show and duplicate it, right down to the punctuation.

And that’s it for my addendum/errata. Riley’s book will be nothing new to most screenwriters, but it’s a helpful and practical guide for newcomers. Note that he deliberately doesn’t teach anything about writing–and his snippet examples aren’t particularly inspiring. This book is strictly about formatting, and on that level, it’s solid enough that I hereby abdicate all common formatting questions to it.